2010-10-26

Fun stuff! Pics from the Oktoberfest fund raising dinner hosted by Knights of Columbus in Merritt which I attended with my husband...there was Schnitzel, Bratwurst, rotkohl, weiskohl (red - YUMMY- and white cabbage), kartoffeln (potatoes), gravy, spaetzlie- I don't know how to even spell that- it's like a flour pasta that's hand cut but they kind of cheated by putting it through a meat grinder to get it to form shapes and used wholewheat flour (oops!). Also baked pretzels and Black Forest cake for desert! Only sad part was not having Bill there. I'm sure he would have attended. But despite that it was really fun- who can resist oomphah musik? I even danced once- lol

Germans love their hats adorned with isignia from their home regions and clubs.

Traditional German dress for men consists of white shirt, suspenders and lederhosen (leather pants that usually end above the knees), wooly socks...and beer!

German/Cowboy crossover style! German women's traditional dress is usually a snug laced vest over a feminine blouse and a skirt past the knees with a fancy apron. The whole ensemble is called a Dirndl Kleid.

Celtic Elf style posing with a beer whilst selling pretzles!

German Oompah band from Chilliwack- sorry I can't remember the name guys!

Due to changes within our local art club I am finally updating our groups online presence. Unfortunately there is a stall on that front because of some ruckus in our membership so I won't bother linking to anything just yet which is just as well- I've spent enough time on it and the members need to see printed stuff. Topping it off I had a bizarre thing happen to my computer yesterday- 2 partitions just disappeared. 1 of them had my whole photo collection. I was a bit panicked at first but was relatively sure my pre-backup was up-to-date. Just confirmed that today but wasted a whole day yesterday trying to retrieve the partitions AND figure out what happened.

I felt sure I had been hacked somehow because this happened to my photo collection- my livelihood you could say- and the partition that held that data was neat as a pin and super well organized. The other missing partition was literally something I just kept around as a separate area for fiddling with websites and what not.

After some hours of looking at the state of damage I think that this doesn't really look like a targeted hack after all- that didn't stop me from spending a few hours dwelling on just how low a life of a loser a hacker must have; mean-spirited, no doubt friendless or whose only friends are similarly pathetic and disgusting.

More and more this is looking like: a. Hard drive failure (which I doubt) or b. Re-installation of the printer driver the night before had done some kind of drastic damage...if that is the case (and I am starting to think it is) then how is having logical partitions on the main drive useful at all? I understood that data retrieval is quicker on the partitions closest to C but is that all it's good for? I only think the reinstall of a hardware's driver (a small necessary program) might be at fault because a Microsoft website implies that this is possible based on the error message-if I'm reading that correctly.

You know on the old fashioned record players when the needle hits a tiny speck and skitters across the whole platter leaving a scratch? Now you have a crackling bit of sound on every song that fell under the scratch...the little bit of space between songs was no barrier to the needle.

I think it's something like that with the hard drive. Whatever. I often go to Major Geeks for answers to my questions. Need to figure out how to get the space lost from the absence of those drives back.

2010-10-21

I want to dedicate this post to Bill Otway who passed away in Merritt last Sunday. He was a champion of the rights of hunters, fishers, and the environment.

***

About 20 years ago I saw a thin red line on the southern bank of the Thompson River south of Spences Bridge, B.C. I had been swimming in this river on an off all August while I was living in the area after the carnival I had been working on had parked it's gear for the winter and I wasn't in any hurry to go home.

But as August cooled into October and the weather began to change I had decided that I could no longer handle the cold river because the lovely heat of summer had gone but I was still drawn to the river where I also had enjoyed sketching and reading. The day after that decision I walked across the highway to see how my swimming hole was looking and was shocked to see a blood red streak racing upriver.I instantly recalled that this must be the massive fish migration we learned about in school and barreled down to see it up close.

I can't even begin to say how awed I was to see this. If I had been willing to get my feet wet I could have grabbed salmon right out of the water without any effort. Every shade of red and degree of abrasion was to be seen on these salmon as they swam their way against the rough current on their way to the Shuswap and onward to their place of birth on the Adams River. At this point in the river they had come about 2/3 of the way.

Over the years I often thought about that experience and always kept my eye on the river banks in October in the hopes of seeing this again. When I lived in Maple Ridge with my husband for a year I did manage to see chum salmon moving up Kanaka Creek and almost walked right into a bear eating salmon on that same river. But since we moved to Merritt a few years ago I made a vow that I would visit the spawning grounds - only a two hour drive from home - and show my husband this wonderful phenomena

It was a really fun day for us and I was awed and amazed at the sheer numbers of fish in the river. You could practically walk across their backs in some places. There were heavily congested parts of the river where the fish churned around restlessly waiting for the spawning beds to open up and further along they were evenly spread across the shallow gravels. Still in other places where the river meandered off into streams the salmon were going about their waiting in a more leisurely way.

I was also impressed with the turnout of people in Roderick Haig-Brown Park where the best viewing was to be had. I took videos on my phone to show Bill the next day but to our great sadness he had passed away that morning. We miss him and I know I will always think of him whenever I go to a river and see a salmon heading upstream in fall on it's way to finish off it's last days in the Shuswap.